One of my earliest childhood memories is of me sitting in front of a much larger keyboard, attempting to follow finger patterns as my stern piano teacher admonished me. That was 10 years ago and since then, my relationship with the piano has been… tumultuous to say the least.
It began with six-year-old me absolutely dreading class with my boring, moustached teacher. As time progressed and I learnt under a few more instructors, my interest grew along with my dedication. As the years passed, piano got pushed to the sidelines. I still went to classes, I still had my upright proudly displayed at home, but something was missing. It took me a surprising number of years to reach the realization that perhaps this instrument just wasn’t for me.
The truth was that it just didn’t give me joy—it didn’t work for me. The combination of weekly practice, music exams, and monotonous pieces were grating on me. I finally decided to confront my monster in the room. But by that point, I had been playing for 10 whole years and had spent my whole life telling people I “played the piano.” It was one of the few hobbies I could fall back on and was an integral part of my extracurricular portfolio for universities. So what was I to do?
In my quest to make the right choice, I looked around and saw just how many of my friends had the same problem—whether it was MUN, art, dance, or music, I found an overwhelming number of my friends trapped into continuing activities that they had initially loved only to realize they didn’t anymore, all for college applications and portfolios. After all, consistency is key.
So ultimately, was I able to find a solution to this conundrum?
Well… sort of. I don’t exactly have the sort of optimistic answer you would find in help columns. The truth is, that I’m still playing the piano and doing classes, to this day. But I did take a step back and see what I could do to change it up. I took a two month hiatus and decided to switch the pieces I wanted to do. I chose not to take an exam this year, opting for next year instead, so I could take it slow. All of this didn’t lead to some big miracle with me loving the hobby—but on the plus side, I don’t dislike it anymore either. Compromising your extracurriculars isn’t easy—you might wonder, what’s a little suffering if it gets me where I want to be? And you aren’t wrong, I’m guilty as charged. But if there are things you can do to make the journey more tolerable for yourself, do them. There are no quick fixes and I shall likely be reminding myself of that for the next two years as I continue playing this instrument, but even tiny changes go a long way!
Okay phew, that’s enough introspection today. I’m going to go play the piano and cry now.
Written by Mahika Shergill
Designed by Tia Parulkar
Images taken from Unsplash
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